The DependencyPropertyConverter class only converts from a String into an instance of DependencyProperty. Other attempts at conversion throw an exception.

The DependencyPropertyConverter converts from a String using the following input format: typeName.propertyName. A format of namespacePrefix:typeName.propertyName is also accepted for legacy reasons but the namespacePrefix: component is ignored. A format of propertyName is also accepted in certain cases; this format relies on the ability to evaluate ambient properties and deduce the typeName, by service implementation of IAmbientProvider in the context.

For legacy reasons, this class also supports conversion from BAML records, but this is an implementation detail and should not be relied upon.

The behavior of this converter is specifically oriented around a single WPF scenario for XAML processing: reading the attribute value of Property and generating a DependencyProperty value.